The present invention relates to techniques for recording information on a recording medium.
Recently, digital versatile disks (DVDs) are becoming popular as media for distributing video titles such as motion pictures so that people can enjoy many kinds of pictures at home. Companies distributing motion pictures are marketing picture titles copied on DVD media as well as videotape for home use, which have generally been used heretofore. General users who have a household DVD player can enjoy motion pictures recorded on a DVD. A DVD-R (DVD-Recordable) which is compatible with the DVD is a write-once, read-many optical disk on which the user can record video and audio information as he or she likes to get. Household video camera products supporting DVD-R recording media are expected to be available in the market. To make a DVD-R disk compatible with and replayable by the above-mentioned DVD player, recording something on the disk must be finally processed by a record-on-medium ending process. As this ending process, at least, a process generally called “finalizing” is performed.
Then, processing details on finalizing will be described. FIG. 2 is provided to explain the finalizing, where inner tracks are shown at the left end and outer tracks at the right end. (Detailed data structure is also disclosed in JP-A-273304/1996.)
Before finalizing, as shown in FIG. 2, a DVD-R has a lead-in/control data zone 200 (where predefined data was already recorded when the DVD-R was manufactured) and a user data zone where user video and audio data was recorded.
Data is written to the lead-in/control data zone when finalizing is performed. Thus, to explicitly denote that the data existing in the lead-in/control data zone before finalizing changes after finalizing, another reference numeral 203 is assigned to the lead-in/control data zone after finalizing.
Then, by finalizing, predetermined information or data is recorded in a lead-in zone 202 (shown in FIG. 2 inner of the lead-in/control data zone 203), a management information zone 204 (shown in FIG. 2 between the lead-in/control data zone 203 and the user data zone 201), a border-out zone 206 (shown in FIG. 2 outer of the user data zone 201), and a lead-out zone 207 (shown in FIG. 2 outer of the user data zone 201).
The lead-out zone is defined to have a track width of 2 mm or more (A in FIG. 2) for a disk with a diameter of 8 cm and its minimum zone shall be provided within the circumference with a diameter of 7 cm (B in FIG. 2). If data to be recorded by the user is small, that is, the width of the user data zone is small, the lead-out zone becomes large accordingly and more time is taken to write predetermined data to the lead-out zone, making the finalizing time longer.
Referential previous inventions pertaining to the video recording apparatus using the DVD-R media have been disclosed; e.g., the one disclosed in JP-A-273304/1996 and the one disclosed in JP-A-148166/2001. In the JP-A-148166/2001, however, a technique for cutting the time required for the record-on-medium ending process including finalizing is not disclosed. The present invention results from our efforts addressing the question of how we can cut such time, as will be described in detail below.
[Problems to be Solved by the Invention]
The above-described record-on-medium ending process practiced in the heretofore-applied manner involves some drawbacks which will be described below.
A problem in the previous video recording technique was posed in the following situation. When the user initiates the record-on-medium ending process after brief shooting, it takes rather long for the video recorder to finalize the medium and complete the ending process. During this process, the user cannot do further shooting and worse must wait for the process to complete.
Meanwhile, optical disk recording media are available with a rewritable type and a write-once, read-many type. The contents of the rewritable-type media can be rewritten as the name is self-explanatory.
On the other hand, something can be written only once to the write-once, read-many type media. As the rewritable-type media, DVD-RAM, DVD-RW, PC-RW, etc. are known. As the write-once, read-many type media, DVD-R is known. Although either type can be used as information-recording media and information can be recorded thereon, the method of recording information on the medium differs, depending on the characteristics of each type. Information-recording apparatus must be capable of recording information, based on the recording method for the medium type on which it records information.
By being processed by the record-on-medium ending process including finalizing, as described above, record carriers such as DVD-R, DVD-RW, OC-RW, etc. have substantially the same characteristics as the replay-only disks when information recorded on them is reproduced. Thus, these record carriers can be replayed by an existing DVD playback apparatus.
While being finalized, the recording medium cannot be removed from the video recorder. The longer the finalization time, the longer the user is left waiting before the user can replace the recording medium with a new one and resume recording.
During the finalization, generally, predetermined information or data is written to the zones remaining unfilled with record. Consequently, the shorter the shooting time, the larger will be the area of the zones that remain unfilled with record. The more predetermined information or data must be written to such zones during finalizing and more time is taken.
As described above, if the shooting time is relatively short, the record-on-medium ending process forces the user to wait for quite some time before replacing the recording medium by a new one and resuming recording. This poses a problem such as inconvenience of use for the user.
It is desirable to provide a solution to the foregoing problem, for example, reducing the wait time involved by the execution of the record-on-medium ending process. Thereby, the operating facility of video recording apparatus is improved, for example, the user can soon begin next shooting with a new recording medium.